Title: The Shepherd's Aspiration
Scripture: 1 Timothy 3:1
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
Well, a few days ago on October 31st, we celebrated the 508th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, which was occasioned by Martin Luther's nailing of his 95 theses to the door at the castle at Wittenberg, Germany in 1517. And while many would make the claim that the doctrines of the Reformation are such as the sufficiency of Scripture alone and justification by faith alone, that those were the key battle grounds of the Reformation, there was also another great battle that was waged by the Reformers against the spiritual abuses of church leaders. In fact, nearly half of Luther's 95 theses deal with the errors of the Pope and of the abuses of the preachers of indulgences who ministered only for money.
All told, papal and pastoral abuse was rampant in the pre-Reformation church in Europe. The vast majorities of the priests were illiterate and untrained, and yet they wielded unrelenting authority over their congregations. William Tyndale, an English Reformer, wrote this, Brotherhoods, penances, soul masses, bells, organs, chalices, copes, surpresses, ewers, censors, and all manner of ornaments.
And then he proclaims, poor sheep. Another writer says, priests have farms and tanneries and warehouses all over the country. In short, the clerks take everything from their flocks and not only give them nothing, but even deny them the Word of God.
After the Reformation began in England, the monasteries were dissolved and opened up. All the buildings, all the properties were opened up. One Reformation historian, J. Merle d'Aubigné, records the vile events that took place inside of those monasteries.
They found that women had been kept as concubines. The starved bodies of the peasants lined the floors. Dungeons which housed the poor.
Just examples of indecency and immorality and debauchery. One member of the London Commission that was reported to investigate these happenings wrote this when he went back to London. He wrote this.
He says, we have discovered not seven, but more than 700,000 deadly sins. These abominable monks are the ravening wolves whose coming Christ has announced and whose under sheep's clothing devour the flock. Writing in 1538, reformer Martin Busser lamented, where are the innocent servants of Christ who bring Christ's sheep, nothing but the Lord's voice and word, who are zealous to seek all the Lord's lost sheep, to bring back those who have gone astray, to heal the injured, to strengthen the weak, to guard the strong and feed them aright, and also to shut out from the congregation of Christ all those who do not wish to listen to the Lord's word and mend their ways.
In essence, that is the call of true pastoral ministry. And it was under attack in those days. It's even under attack in our day.
So many people have experienced abuse by pastors and elders and even just negligence from the ministry. Even many of you have come here wounded from other places. I've talked to many of you who were hurt somewhere else and have landed here.
We see a whole array of unqualified and disqualified men and women, for that matter, who abuse the church of Jesus Christ and withhold His Word and His grace. And Jesus in John 10 laments them as hired hands who care nothing for the sheep. And yet how do we protect the church from such wolves? How do we ensure that we have godly, capable, loving shepherds over Christ's flock? And the answer in a word is that we have to qualify them.
And God in His grace and kindness provides us with criteria to do so. And we find one of those key passages in 1 Timothy chapter 3. So if you're looking in your copy of Scripture this morning, 1 Timothy chapter 3, we've been here for a little bit. We're going to continue to be here for a little while longer.
We remember that the Apostle Paul has written this first letter to the church there in Ephesus, and he's left behind some parting instructions to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20. Just to refresh your memory of the events of this, when he was in Ephesus before, the Apostle Paul told the elders, be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
And from among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore, he says, be on alert, remembering that day and night for a period of three years, I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are being sanctified.
So now Paul, several years later, is thinking back of the time that he spent in Ephesus and he's reminding Timothy, who's one of the pastors there, how he is to go about caring for the flock. And beginning here in chapter 3, he undertakes to prescribe the kind of men who will be able to shepherd the flock of God. And so look with me at 1 Timothy chapter 3, we're going to look at verses 1 through 7. We're going to read verses 1 through 7, but we're only going to cover one verse today.
But I want you to get the context of what he is saying to Timothy. Chapter 3 verse 1, it is a trustworthy statement, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity. But if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into approach and the snare of the devil.
One thing that has boggled my mind for years is why God chose to care for the church in the way that he did. And think about this with me. At any point after the resurrection, Jesus could have reigned here on earth, not only as king, but also as the physical head of the church.
And yet after he ascended, he left behind others to shepherd the flock, his disciples. And even after he did that, if you think about it with me, Jesus could have appointed angels to come down to earth and shepherd over the church to guard against error and immorality and all kinds of things. And yet he didn't do that.
Instead, God, in his sovereign plan, chose to call and appoint men out of the church who are themselves flawed and sinful and in need of his grace. He chose flawed men to shepherd flawed churches. Yet he provided a metric for ensuring that redeemed sinners could be entrusted with the sacred responsibility and that they would be above reproach in their character and abilities.
And there would be qualifications. And those who are both qualified and called would also desire to give their lives in service to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, it leads us to consider how the church leaders were affirmed in the early church.
And actually Acts 13 gives us a window into some of the early practices that records the calling of several ministers, including Barnabas and Saul. I just want to read this to you, just a couple of verses from Acts 13. Luke writes, Now there were at Antioch in the church that was there prophets and teachers, and he names them, Barnabas and Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, and Manan, who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and he says, and Saul.
While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then when they had fasted and prayed, He laid their hands on them and sent them away. Now in this situation, we see that the Holy Spirit is intervening directly to call these men into a specific kind of ministry.
And yet we know that even from that point, within a couple of decades, the churches themselves, through the discernment of the apostles and the disciples and the elders, would then go on and appoint other elders. For example, in the letter to Titus, which is about maybe 20 or 25 years after the time of the events of Acts 13, he tells the young disciple Titus, who's serving on the island of Crete, he says, to set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I have directed you. And so we see that in the history of the early church, it's unfolding.
We see spiritual leadership that is developing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the direction of the apostles, and the affirmation of church elders. And yet all of this seems to begin, at least from what we can observe, it begins with this God-implanted desire inside the heart of the potential elder. Now that's not to be divorced from the calling of the Holy Spirit, the affirmation of the church and the church leaders, but there's something that's implanted in a man who would go and do this.
Of course, we understand that there are some incidences where men are pressed into pastoral ministry. I think probably my favorite story comes to us in the tradition of the legend of the calling of Nicholas to be the Bishop of Myra. So we all know him as Santa Claus, but that's not really who he is.
St. Nicholas, as we know him, is actually Nicholas of Myra, the pastor of the church there. And the story goes that at the height of Roman persecution, when pastors were frequently jailed and tortured and even killed, there was a vacancy of a lot of churches for pastors. Where'd your pastor go? Well, he got beheaded and he's gone.
Oh, we have to get another one. So they were going through this conveyor belt of new pastors into the churches during the time of persecution. And so the bishops that are around there, bishop is just pastors.
When the pastors were there gathering for prayer, according to tradition, they received some kind of vision from the Lord that the next person who entered into the church, whose name was Nicholas, would be called as the new pastor of that church. The next morning, a young man named Nicholas came to the church just to pray. And when he walked through the doors, they stopped him and said, what is your name, son? And he said, my name is Nicholas.
And they rejoiced and they grabbed him and they made him the new pastor. Even though he was protesting, he's too young, he's too inexperienced, and they didn't listen. They made him the pastor in Myra.
And he finally accepted the call and served that church until the end of his life. That's not the normal way pastors are called to churches. Nobody called and said, the next guy named Nate's going to show up here.
If anything, it was the last option, but that's okay. But we can readily see that there is something else going on. How does a man go from a life as a believer in the church of God to go then and arrive in ministry? Well, the Bible tells us here in this passage, it begins with aspiration.
Verse 1, Paul says, it is a trustworthy statement. If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. This is the second of five trustworthy statements in Paul's letters here.
These are statements of core spiritual truth, whereas the first one came in chapter 1 verse 15 expresses the purpose of Jesus' incarnation as He came to save sinners, and that's what Paul says is a trustworthy statement. Now this trustworthy statement regards the blessing of serving in pastoral ministry. And he's saying here that aspiring and desiring the office of shepherding, overseeing, he says that to desire that office is to do a fine work.
Now, at this point here, at the beginning of the verse, we see that Paul begins teaching on spiritual leadership of verses 1 through 7 here. He begins by issuing somewhat of an all-call. He puts this out to everybody that's in the congregation.
Well, not unlike today, you know, we're putting out a sort of an application or an ad to say anybody who's interested, come and talk to us about this. But he doesn't begin by listing the same way that we would tend to seek after candidates even today. It says nothing of previous training.
It says nothing of experience. It says, in Paul's case, it doesn't talk about whether he's a Jew or a Gentile, it makes no distinction there. It doesn't specify an age range.
I think sometimes we can tend to overcomplicate this. I think a lot of churches, it's always amazing to me that they'll say, okay, we want a young man who is full of excitement and aspiration, but he's got to have, you know, five degrees and 20 years experience, and it's like these men are almost impossible to find. Churches make it so difficult to find these new pastors because their expectations are almost worldly, the way that they would hire a CEO of a company.
Instead, start by opening the Bible. What is the man called to be? That's why we have these qualifications. But he begins by saying, to any man who's aspiring, if anybody desires or aspires to this office.
And actually, it's even more broad than what the New American Standard translates. The Greek word for man here is actually not used in the original. The ESV, if you have an ESV Bible, it's actually closer to the original text.
It says, if anyone is aspiring. It's as broad as Paul can make it. However, this all call, we know that it is intended to be applied to the men of the church specifically and not to the women.
We know this. We know this for several reasons. For starters, we've already addressed this in chapter 2, verse 12, that the women of the church were not called to teach in the assembly over the entire church or exercise authority over the men of the church.
We covered this several weeks ago if you were here. He grounds the mandate of both of those things in the creation order and also in the fall in verses 13 and 14. So he's already addressed the issue of spiritual leadership in terms of women and men.
Again, this is an issue of biblical headship that God desires that men are the ones who are to be leading over the assembly in the church. That's what God has commanded us to do, and that is the command to which we are to respond. But there's a second evidence, I believe, where Paul intends this to be men.
It's in verse 1. He goes right into the first qualification. What's the first qualification? That he must be above reproach, but then what does he say? Verse 2, that he must be the husband of one wife. Again, he's talking to men.
He's desiring, he's addressing this to faithful, monogamous men in the church. And so keeping with the understanding that Paul has men in mind, he's issuing this all-call. He says, listen, all right, pay attention, anybody, anybody who's interested in aspiring to the office of overseer, he says it's a fine work that they desire to do.
But there must be something of an aspiration, an aspiring, a desiring. This Greek word that's translated aspire is oregatai, which means to reach for or to stretch for, to grasp after. This isn't just kind of like looking around the room and saying, well, who else is going to do it? I guess I'll do it.
That's not the sense of it at all. It's someone who's desiring, grasping for this office. One scholar says that this impulse is something that you're setting your heart on.
What do you set your heart on to? That's the essence of the word. Similarly, the word desire is epithumia, which is to long for or to crave, even to covet. Some uses of this word is lust, to desire that.
Now, obviously, in this situation, it's not a lustful desire in a sinful way, but it's an earnest desire. When you want something so bad, you can almost taste it. That's the sense of epithumia.
What is this thing to which men are aspiring and desiring? What are we chasing after here? Well, Paul uses this word in the original, it's episcope, episcope. It's derived from the word episcopeo, which means to look upon or to oversee or even to care for. But in the context of the church, the men who are called to this kind of oversight are referred to as episkopos.
So it's all the same derivative word here, but the question is, well, why am I dealing with all the different verbs and conjugations? Well, because there's a lot of confusion over the years with regards to who leads the church, what are they called to do, and how are they called? Because even in our context in New England, and if you look at the course of New England history, most New England churches in the early days, there was a board of deacons serving alongside a solo pastor to be the church's leadership. And many of you probably came from churches like that. There was the pastor, and then there was all the deacons, and then there was another office of leader called trustee.
I don't even know where that came from, but that's not in the Bible, okay? But we've concocted this sort of amalgam of church leadership and made it work for us, but the truth is, is there's a lot of confusion because the word deacon is diakonos. It's a different word from episkopeo. Diakonos means it's a servant responsibility.
Diakonos is just serving, servant. And so spiritual oversight is not diakonos, it's episkopeo, which primarily constitutes the office of overseeing and leading in the church. And yet we see throughout the entire New Testament, there are actually several titles with various words used, all referring to the exact same ministry.
For example, here in 1 Timothy 3, 1, episkopos is translated as overseer, and in some translations, older translations actually refer to this word as bishop, bishop. It's the same word, overseer, bishop, same original word. However, if you were to look at Titus 1, verses 5 through 7, we see English translations using that same word here, but we see it translated overseer, episkopos in Titus 1, 7, but also elder, which is presbyteros, but they're interchangeable in Titus 1. And yet in Acts 20, 17 and Acts 20, 28, Paul connects the word elder, which is presbyteros, and overseer, episkopos, also with poimanos, which is shepherds.
In fact, the word poimanos, shepherd, is also the same word for pastor. And so, we see several Greek words, several titles, but it's one office, one job, one responsibility, overseer, bishop, elder, shepherd, pastor. And so, even though we kind of delineate between the pastor, elder, lay elder, things like that, because of the function of it in this church, in terms of what the Bible says, there are three pastors currently over this church, myself, Tom, and Scott.
So that's the same job, same responsibilities. That point is really important, because if we're going to move ahead and understand what this office is, we have to see it rightly and biblically. Now, at this point, we have not yet addressed anything pertaining to the actual ministry itself.
What does this entail? And without going any further, it'd be very tempting for the men to say, well, I want to do that. I want to aspire to the office of eldership. I want to run the church.
And that's what happens in a lot of situations where a guy who's young and zealous and has read a Bible a couple times says, oh, I want to be in charge. And that becomes the basis of their aspiration. And sadly, far too many men see it this way.
It becomes a power grab, or it becomes a seat at the table, or if you're an older man who's been here forever, it's a long overdue appointment or a spiritual promotion or a resume builder or a well-deserved honor. These are all wrong views of how and why to aspire to eldership. But true spiritual oversight, eldership, pastoral ministry is more than sitting on a board and making decisions.
That's not the bulk of the responsibility. Paul says that when a man aspires to the office of overseer, he's actually undertaking a serious labor. Paul says it is a fine work he desires to do.
But I want to focus on a word here, the word ergon in the Greek, it's work, work, the tasks and employments of pastoral ministry. What exactly is the work that such a man would be aspiring to do? Because there's much to ministry, and there's a lot of things that kind of come into the realm of pastoral ministry that you can't find a verse for and they're not on the textbooks. A lot of weird things that take place in the life of a church that kind of fall into that responsibility.
It's a seamlessly endless list of endeavors. Over the years, I mean, something will come up and I guess, oh, I guess that's my job and I'll run and do it, and I don't really know where it came from, but that's what we're going to do today. Or you arrive at someone's home or you arrive in a situation, you go to the hospital and you're exposed to something, and I didn't realize that was my responsibility, but I guess today it is.
There's always new kinds of things that we're exposed to, and so there's a broad umbrella of things, but there are core principles, core responsibilities, core elements of work that are part of pastoral ministry. And so at the top of that list, I want to just give you sort of a somewhat of an outline here. Number one, what is the work of pastoral ministry? Number one, preaching and teaching.
Preaching and teaching. In fact, Paul focuses on these particular responsibilities in chapter 5 verse 17 when he prescribes, he says, double honor to those who work hard at preaching and teaching. Why are preaching and teaching so important? It is because that those disciples in the church, you all, must be nourished and trained and convicted and exhorted.
Three times in John 21 before Jesus goes back to heaven, he commands Peter, he says, feed my sheep, tend my lambs, shepherd my sheep. Jesus cares about this. He cares.
Jesus Christ cares for you enough to demand from pastors and elders that we must feed you and nourish you and care for you. And how does that happen? It comes to a steady diet of Scripture, rightly explained and rightly applied. A pastor, an elder, must be a man of the Word.
And I was always told, don't just read the Bible for sermons, even I have to read this book for my own soul as well. If I'm not growing as a pastor, there's no way I can feed you out of an empty tank. And so it's a devotion, it's a laser line focused devotion on God's Word, not just to take it in, but also to give it back out again.
It's a huge responsibility. Pastors and elders are called to work hard at preaching and teaching. We're going to talk more about this in a couple weeks.
But the fine work of ministry also involves, number two, shepherding, shepherding. This is the exercise of spiritual oversight, but more specifically, it's guiding the sheep toward Christ. A primary goal that we have as elders is to guide you, to point you back to Jesus.
It is not about pointing you to us, it's not about pointing you to this church, even though those things are important, ministry here at this church is important, but ultimately shepherding is about bringing you, directing your attention away from the world, away from yourselves, away from your flesh, directing your attention back to Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, I want you to know Him. We were just talking this morning, I mean, it is my transcended obsession to get you to know and love Jesus more.
Why? Well, because I want to know Him too. So we're doing this together here. Why do we spend five and a half years in Matthew? It wasn't because I was bored.
We did it because the most important thing is to focus your mind and your attention on Christ. What better place to be than in a gospel for a while? So that's always the focus, is shepherding you, leading you back to Jesus. It's so, so, so important.
This includes a number of disciplines. Titus 2.15 says, these things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority, he says. Let no one disregard you.
In other words, nobody's allowed to tell a pastor you can't do this because Jesus says we must to speak and exhort and reprove. Speaking involves teaching and explaining and answering questions and giving instructions. I'm not just a pastoral encyclopedia.
I had one student tell me, I'm like pastor GPT, I'm like, I'll take it. But there's more. It's about giving you help and bringing you along and understanding the Word of God as I grow to understand the Word of God.
So speaking the things that are according with sound doctrine, but it's also more than that. It's exhorting. That means encouragement and comfort and building up and helping along.
I want to lift you up. So many times we come together, we're downtrodden, we're downcast, we're low. Part of my job is to exhort you and lift you up and shepherd you and exhort you and build you closer to Christ in that way.
But it also includes reproving. Reproving, that's rebuking, that's correcting, that's confronting, that's disciplining. Someone has to tell you the truth because we always go our own way.
Sheep go astray all the time. And so someone serving under the Lordship of Christ is called to rein you back in and direct you back to the flock and back to the truth and back to the Lord. That's the job of pastoral shepherding.
Again, all of this is to guide you not to ourselves, not to this assembly, it's to guide you back to the chief shepherd. He's the one to whom you belong. You don't belong to me.
You belong to Him. And so my job is to run around like a sheepdog and bark until you go to the shepherd. Number three, pastoral ministry includes prayer.
Prayer. Elders, pastors are to devote themselves to praying for God's people. In fact, one of the problems that arose in Acts chapter 6 involved a lack of physical care for the widows.
That was an issue of service. That was the issue of diakonos, of serving, of those who would give themselves to service. But the problem became so prohibitive that the disciples said, it is not desirable for us to neglect the Word of God in order to serve tables.
The more they're doing the physical elements of serving the church, even though that's a good work, it's good to serve the church, but the disciples are getting to the point where I'm spending so much time serving the church, the body, the physical needs, I'm neglecting the Word of God. Shame! If we do that, we can't neglect the Word of God to serve tables. And so the church called seven deacons, in a sense, to help with the need, to which the elders replied, we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.
Elders, pastors are called to devote themselves to prayer. Many times when I'm talking with someone, and I've said this probably to all of you at some point, if I've gotten to know you, I'll ask the question, how can I pray for you? I want to pray for you. I want to bring your name, bring your needs, bring your heart before the Lord in my prayers and ask the Father to minister to you.
It's my honor, it's our honor to pray for you. We love to do it, but it is a responsibility to pray for the flock. Another aspect of pastoral ministry is number four, guarding the truth, guarding the truth.
In Titus 1.9, Paul insists that elders ought to be holding fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict. When error comes into the church, who is ultimately responsible for identifying and refuting it? Ultimately, it's the elders and the shepherds and the pastors, because there's always error. Every single week, there's some kind of error trying to weasel its way into this assembly.
How does it do that? It does so through conversations that you have, through books that you read, through media, through online, through the news channels. There's all kinds of ways that these errors can come into the church, and it's our job to, number one, discern those errors and refute them, to stand against them. Paul had already warned the Ephesians that savage wolves were going to come in and not spare the flock.
False teachers don't care about you. They only want to boast in the numbers and the flesh and the money. They just boast.
They care nothing for you. Your shepherds do. The chief shepherd does.
But elders are called to be on the alert, to skillfully minister the Word of God in order to stamp out error. Again, Titus 1.13 says that elders must deal with false teachers by, listen to this, reproving them severely so that they might be sound in the faith. I don't believe that the pulpit is a place to just stand here every single Sunday and just yell and scream about false teachers.
I know that there are some ministries where that's all they ever seem to do is just call out error all the time. I think when you do that too much, you lose your voice. I really do.
I think it just becomes like the teacher from Peanuts, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. You just, all the time, you're just always talking about how awful Joel Osteen is and Benny Hinn, and just always name-dropping false teachers. I think you lose something when you do it that way.
But when there are substantial errors or false teachers that are trying to infiltrate the church, specifically this church, it is important to name names and call out error so that when you do do it, it makes an impact and people are paying attention. Because there's lots of false teachers that are out there in the world that none of you have even heard of before. So why would I call out someone you've never heard of or some doctrine you don't care about and make that a big thing? But when there are errors coming in, you better believe I'm going to stand against it, and so are we.
It's important that we shepherd and protect the flock and guard against error. A pastor is called to love the sheep, but he's also called to shoot the wolves. Number five, visit the sick and suffering.
Visit the sick and the suffering. James talks about this in chapter five. He says, is anyone among you sick? He says, then he must call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins they will be forgiven him.
Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. This is a call for pastoral visitation and care and prayer and ministry to visit those who are hurting.
There are times when believers are sick and hurting and distressed, and that's happened with many of you, if not all of you. I know I visited many of you, and the elders have visited many of you in your homes and in the hospitals, and there are times when you are down and you're hurting and you're laid up or you're at home, you're a shut-in, or you're in the hospital for a week or two weeks, and at a certain point in your affliction, doubts begin to creep in. And that voice in your head says, Lord, where are you? Why am I here? Lord, why are you not coming to me and helping me in my time of affliction? I'm not saying that's right, but I'm saying that we tend to do that.
We start to despair. And right when you feel like, Lord, where are you, in walks your pastor, and it can be helpful. And the pastor is there to pray with you and to cry with you and to encourage you and to comfort in you and bind up your soul and help you along.
It's not that this is a hero's thing, it's a stewardship thing. That whenever you're visited by a church leader, they're going to you, they're coming to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to come and help you along. And there are some pastors who won't do that kind of ministry.
I think that's wrong. Now, is it possible to be every single place all the time? I'm a church our size, I cannot be everywhere all at once. It's not possible.
But as often as I can, as many places as I can go, as many of you as I can try to be there for, I will do it. This is truly a fine work. Believe me when I say that, it's a fine work.
It doesn't put me out to go to the hospital. I really don't mind at all. There are far worse things I could be doing.
I'd rather go to the hospital than sit through endless meeting after meeting after meeting. Because going to the hospital, that's where we're most needed. I know just autobiographically, I've shared a lot of precious moments with so many of you.
And they're not long visits, I don't expect you to bake a plate of cookies when I come, just be there in your misery. I'll be there with the Bible, we'll talk, we'll pray, I won't overstay my welcome, and then we'll go. But that's how God ministers, because here's the thing, if I do that for you, and if the elders do that for you, what will you do when you know someone's hurting? You'll want to do the same thing, right? I've been to the hospital, and I've visited people, and they'll say, oh, so-and-so was just here, so-and-so was just here, praise the Lord, to help and visit each other in our affliction.
But that's a fine work that we're called to do. Number six, I've got seven of them, guys. Number six, training and ordaining.
As we saw earlier, part of the responsibility of elders is to train up other godly men and ordain them to ministry. We see this in 1 Timothy 4, verse 14, which recounts that even Timothy, even Timothy himself, was installed into ministry, Paul says, through the laying on of the hands of the presbytery of elders. Furthermore, Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.2, he says, the things that you've heard from me, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
So there is a Christian relay that we're in right now. It began 2,000 years ago with our Lord Jesus Christ. There's a relay.
We must endeavor to keep passing the torch. There's always, we're always on the lookout for identifying faithful men, faithful men who aren't just faithful in their pursuits and faithful in their character, but also faithful men who are able. So it's one thing to be a faithful man, you have to also be an able man, able to teach others also.
So there's a lot there. They have to be faithful, they have to be available and able, and they have to be teachable. And when you find those men, there is a stewardship, a responsibility of pastors and elders and leaders to take what you have learned from the one who gave it to you and pass that on to the next generation and keep it moving.
That's the responsibility of church leadership, of pastors and elders. And so preaching, teaching, shepherding, praying, guarding, visiting, training, ordaining, but also number seven, and finally, modeling, modeling. What do I mean by that? Well, first Timothy, or excuse me, first Peter, chapter five says, Therefore, I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily according to the will of God and not for assorted gain, but with eagerness, nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge.
But listen to this, proving to be examples to the flock. We're going to come to see in chapter three of first Timothy, verses two through seven, that pastors and elders are required to live lives that are above reproach. Again, that doesn't mean flawless.
It doesn't mean sinless or perfect. That's impossible for us to do. But they must reflect the basic portrait of a Christian.
They must be examples of Christ likeness, which is why character qualifications are so important. But growing in holiness and laboring to become an example, that's part of the fine work of pastoral ministry. And yet for those who would aspire to such an office, there are also warnings.
Because it's very easy to hear a sermon like this and read passages like this and be like, oh, sign me up, I'm all in. And be young and zealous and excitable and just want to charge the hill and I'm going to go and do that. Well, praise the Lord for your enthusiasm.
And I honestly think that in many regards, we've held on to these standards so tightly and so highly as we ought to. I think in many cases in this generation, I've talked to other pastors about this, in this generation, I think we've actually put off younger men from aspiring. Because the calling is so high that we tend to, by implication, look at younger men and say, eh, don't do this, it's not a great job.
And we push them off. But I'm becoming convicted that that's actually the wrong approach completely, that we want young men to aspire, we want older men to aspire to do this fine work. But there are warnings.
You've got to know what you're getting into. Hebrews 13, 17 exhorts believers in the congregation to submit themselves to their church leaders. Submit to your leaders, the Bible says.
Obey them. But why? Is it because they're your boss? Is it because they've earned the title or earned the respect? That's not his reasoning. He doesn't say obey your leaders because they're better than you.
Not at all. The writer of Hebrews encourages believers to be submissive to their leaders and to the authorities because of the weightiness of the responsibility that they carry. He says, why should you do this? Because they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.
That's a terrifying thing. And you might look at that and say, well, that's figurative speech. I mean, I'm not really responsible for all of your individual faith.
That's between you and God. Yes, it is. But whose charge are you under in terms of shepherding? The leaders of this church.
We're responsible. We're spiritually responsible for what we teach, how we shepherd, and how we guard. And if we're negligent on any of those counts, shepherding, modeling, guarding, protecting, teaching, if we're negligent, the responsibility is that we're going to have to give an answer to God for what we've done here.
I want to say that one more time. We are responsible to God for you. And I don't take that lightly.
That's why, in fact, James 3 says, let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such, we will incur a stricter judgment. Men who do not understand the responsibilities of pastoral ministry do not understand the threat of judgment that comes if they don't conduct their ministries well, if they're careless, or if they do it wrong. That's why Charles Spurgeon told his students, do not enter the ministry if you can help it.
He told a bunch of, a room full of young eager guys, don't do it. He says, this is quote, be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, rather than a minister. Now, we oftentimes misunderstand the sentiment to mean that men should not enter into ministry at all unless they're totally unhappy doing something else.
If you try every other job and you can't do it, I guess you'd go into ministry. Or if you're so obsessed that you just can't possibly do anything else, then you have to do ministry. But that's not what he's saying.
If you read the whole context, it comes from lectures to my students. It's a classic work. He says this when he's explaining himself.
He says, I speak of self-denials, for the true pastor's work is full of them. And without a love to his calling, he will soon succumb, either to leave the drudgery or move on in discontent, burdened with a monotony as tiresome as that of a blind horse in a mill. In other words, ministry is too hard and the responsibilities are too great simply to wander in casually or overconfidently.
But if you earnestly desire the work and the responsibility of pastoral ministry, Paul says as if to lift the spirits because it is hard. That's why I believe he says it is a fine work you desire to do. It's not drudgery.
I think it was either Wesley or Whitfield that used to say, I am tired from the work, but I'm not tired of the work. There are two different things. You guys see, I've got circles under my eyes.
I'm always tired from working, but I don't ever grow tired of the work. I love this job. It's the best job I've ever done I could ever do.
This is the greatest honor of my life to shepherd this church. And that's not hyperbole at all. But it is work.
Paul says it's a fine work, kallos, noble, worthy, good. It's a good work a man desires to do. It's a work that's full of blessing and full of joy and full of amazement and full of love and honor and purpose.
I mean, we get to be, the elders and I, we get to have a front row seat to the work that God is doing in you. I've seen God work in your lives in ways. I go home and I'm just blown away.
I get to see him bring people to repentance. I get to see him save people. I get to stand in the water and baptize new believers.
I mean, man, that's like the best thing in the world. It's amazing to be part of the ministry of the Lord. 17th century Boston pastor Cotton Mather, my guy, Cotton Mather.
He writes this. The office of the Christian ministry rightly understood is the most honorable and important that any man in the whole world can ever sustain. And it will be one of the wonders and employments of eternity to consider the reasons why the wisdom and goodness of God assigned this office to imperfect and guilty men.
The great design and intention of the office of a Christian preacher are to restore the throne and dominion of God in the souls of men, to display in the most lively colors and proclaim in the clearest language the wonderful perfections, offices and grace of the Son of God and to attract the souls of men into a state of everlasting friendship with Him. It is the work which an angel might wish for and as an honor to his character, yea, an office which every angel in heaven might covet to be employed in for a thousand years to come. It is such an honorable, important, useful office that if a man be put into it by God and made faithful and successful through life, he may look down with disdain upon a crown and shed a tear of pity on the brightest monarch on earth.
Brother, do you want to give your life to something greater than yourself? Serve the Lord Jesus Christ by caring for His flock. What will be the reward of shepherding well? First Peter 5.4 says that when you're finished, when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. The Lord rewards those who love His people and shepherd them well.
It is a fine work. It is a noble task to preach Christ to Christ's people. And I'm not saying this in some kind of a self-congratulatory way.
I see myself as this church's pastor as just the first one of a line of many. I've told many of you my goal and desire in setting out to even plant this church is not just that we could live unto ourselves. I want to anchor this church for the next 100 years.
I want the young men of this church to be rising up and pastoring and shepherding and leading and guarding this church. And more pastors and more elders and more leaders and missionaries and church planters to come out of this assembly. This is about instilling a passion and a desire of shepherding the flock.
I want to send pastors to other churches in New England who need help. This is not about one person, one man, one church. This is about many who are called to serve one, the true and living God, to shepherd his flock, to love his people, to preach his gospel, to stand for truth in a lost and dying world.
What an honor it is. May his shepherds never grow tired or slack from this work. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we love you and we're so grateful to you. Lord, you have done a marvelous, wonderful, confusing thing at times where, Lord, your church is imperfect and it is always and ever led on earth, at least, by imperfect men. And yet you are the perfect one.
We are aspiring not just to lead here, but to love you here. We aspire to know you and to be drawn into you, like the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 3, to count everything else as loss, as rubbish, as trash, in comparison to knowing you. That everything else in our life, every other attainment, every goal, every aspiration in this world would just pale in comparison to what it means to know and love you eternally.
And Lord, that we would give ourselves, certainly the men in this church who would lead in that way, but Lord, all of us as believers, the women and the children, all of us would be aspiring to make you known to other people. That we would undergo loving and supporting this ministry, O Lord, because this ministry exists to exalt you. So Lord, be gracious to us.
Help us not to forget the most important message that we have, and that is the gospel. That you, O Lord Jesus, the shepherd of this church, came as a man on earth, lived here perfectly. You also suffered and died on the cross to pay for our sins.
You were buried in the ground and then you resurrected the third day to demonstrate a mastery, a dominion over sin and death, but also to bring forth life and eternity to all those who would repent and trust in you. Lord, you are the God of our salvation. It is you we proclaim.
It is you we love. It is you we serve. So Lord, help us.
Be merciful. Help us to be faithful to you in all of our labors, in all of our strivings. You are preeminent.
We worship you completely, O Lord, in Jesus name. Amen.